Computing devices are used for providing a wide variety of applications support to users. As used herein, the term “computing device” refers to any equipment with computational capability or that is integrated with equipment with computational ability. Accordingly, as used herein, computing device can include one or more enterprise, application, personal, pervasive and/or embedded computer systems that perform computational operations and associated input and/or output devices or components thereof. Examples of computing devices, as used herein, include computer workstations, personal digital assistants, cell phones, email pagers, automobile navigation systems, and computer-controlled appliances.
As computing devices and application programs for the same evolve, along with networks interconnecting such devices, the range of customer (user) services that can be provided by computing devices is becoming increasingly complex. As a result, the range of personal information transmitted through these distributed networks is expanding and the potential consequences of misuse and/or exploitation of the associated applications or services may be greater, therefore, increasing the importance of security within these networks. Existing methods of securing communications through a distributed network, for example, authentication, encryption, message integrity and the like, may not provide the level of security desired by users of a distributed network. For example, if messages sent between components in a distributed system are encrypted, anyone with the encryption key may access the content of these messages. Thus, if an intruder “hacks” deep enough into the system to obtain the encryption key, the intruder may eavesdrop and gain access to private communications. Accordingly, improved methods of securing messages between components in a distributed network may be desired. Furthermore, an intruder may utilize information contained in the messages, as well as the mere frequency and pattern of messages (encrypted or not), to enable and/or refine attack, improved methods of increasing the difficultly of exploiting such message information may also be desired.